DAY 25– SATURDAY 29TH DECEMBER, 2018…

We woke to drizzling rain this morning.  Today we also had an early start, as I had an appointment back at the hospital to have my shoulder checked out.  As we still had our rental car, we were driving ourselves there this morning….

Fredericksburg Hospital really wasn’t that far from Pete and Maria’s but somehow, we still manage to get lost a couple of times, however, we eventually arrived there.  We needed to go back to the Akutklinik for my appointment, but we had no address for this part of the hospital, and the hospital was huge with many different entrances, so a lot of our getting there was trial and error…

Hospital checkout

We arrived just after 9am and they were expecting me.  I didn’t have to wait too long until I saw the doctor and she checked my arm and just told me to make sure I booked some appointments with a physiotherapist when I got home.   We were expecting the hospital visit, intravenous drip and x-rays to cost us a small fortune as Australia and Denmark do not have reciprocal health benefits, but we were pleasantly surprised when the doctor told us that there would be no charge…..Such a blessing and a bonus….

We arrived back at Pete and Maria’s a little after 10am and the weather was still pretty dismal, so we decided that since we still had the car that we would all head out to Rødovre Centrum to exchange some of our Christmas presents, check out the sales, and buy some gifts to take home for the rest of the family.

new leather gloves for Iceland..

Rødovre Centrum was opened by the gardener Aage Knudsen, with inspiration from American shopping malls in 1966 as the first real shopping mall in Denmark.  One of the other bonuses of going here was that it offered free parking. (this is something quite rare in Copenhagen, where parking costs are huge)

It is a huge complex with a total area of 150,000 square metres of which 44,000 square metres are retail space. The shopping centre consists of more than a hundred shops as well as a cinema multiplex, medical centre and 70 apartments.

I was surprised to see tropical mini pineapples growing in some of the indoor gardens at the centre and of course took photos of these.  Reminded me of being back home.  Lots of pineapples are grown in our region around Rockhampton. 

We all managed to snag some bargains, and exchange what we needed to exchange. Maria bought a special New Year’s Eve cake called Kransekage. This is a marzipan-based cake, traditionally served in layers of wreaths, topped with frosting and sometimes chocolate or almonds, eaten together with Champagne at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  Steve and I bought some leather gloves for our trip to Iceland, I scored a new beanie, we bought a few gifts for family and in total we spent several hours in the centre, finally leaving after the sun had gone down…

The special New Year's Eve cake called Kransekage

Steve and Pete dropped Maria and I back to the apartment and then they took off again to go find a hardware store so that they could stock up on some fireworks for New Year’s Eve.  This is a bit of a novelty for us as it is illegal for the public in Australia to buy and let off fireworks.  You must be a licenced pyrotechnicians to be able to use and set off fireworks in Australia. 

The boys had fun buying all these fireworks for New Year's Eve

The boys went a little overboard and spend a couple of hundred dollars, all of this to just go up in smoke, but they sure were excited with their purchases and were proudly displaying it all to us when they got home. We were certainly going to see the new year in with a BANG….

Got to love this beautiful grandson of ours...

It was a quite relaxed night at home, watching a movie. Tomorrow we have to take the car back to the Airport, so hope to go for a bit of a drive up into the country before handing it back…